sport news Commonwealth Games 2022: London should host athletics

UK Athletics boss Ed Warner believes Liverpool and Birmingham's Commonwealth Games 2022 bid would be enhanced if they let the London Stadium host the athletics.

Warner, who will step down from his role as UK Athletics chairman after the 2017 World Championships, claims the London Stadium is the ideal venue and that hundreds of millions of pounds would be saved if it was used for the Commonwealth Games.

'If I was the leader of either the Liverpool bid, which is looking to put a temporary track into the home of Everton Football Club, or the Birmingham bid, which is looking to significantly upscale the annex on the stadium, I'd be ringing (London Mayor) Sadiq Khan saying 'do you know what? Can we have the athletics in London and we'll do everything else?'

'Why is that? Because the facility is there. I spoke to a civil servant the other day who is heavily involved in this Commonwealth Games bid and he said, and this was his phrase, he was going to be rinsing the Treasury for half a billion pounds to put on an English Commonwealth Games.

'My answer to that is save a load of money, use this amazing facility, the best in the world, and make it an English bid.'

When asked why Liverpool or Birmingham should let London take the blue riband athletics events, Warner said: 'Because it's so expensive to build an athletics facility.